Electric Marketing Blog

The uncertainty over the future of the UK’s data protection laws looks set to continue. In her first speech in her five-year term as Information Commissioner, Elizabeth Denham has acknowledged that when the UK leaves the EU in 2019 or later, there will need to be new UK data protection legislation. One thing that is certain is that the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will apply to all EU member states from 25 May 2018. All UK companies that wish to do business in the EU after that date will need to comply with GDPR. However Denham says that it is up to the UK Government to decide

Following the events of last summer, the Pound crashed against the US Dollar to a 30 year low. The UK's manufactured goods and services are falling in price for shoppers in the EU and across the world. It follows that UK companies which export are set for a few years of strong sales growth. With growth comes new opportunities for b2b marketers to sell into these exporters as they gear up for expansion by investing in recruitment and training, marketing, market research into international markets, IT, international financial services and many other corporate services. While many UK corporates

In May 2016, Companies House reported that there were 3,725,232 companies registered in the UK. Though many will be dormant, non-trading or too small to buy your goods and services, business marketers must decide on the best corporate targets and take aim. Electric Marketing has long offered targeted mailing lists by job title, industry sector, company size and postcode. This week we add a new mailing list selection, companies experiencing a high growth rate. We think these companies are excellent targets for your new business campaigns. Each one demonstrating an annual growth rate of 10% and

It's hard to ignore the international events in the sporting calendar this summer. Football, rugby, cricket and the biggest of them all, the Olympic Games. Although sponsoring the Olympics requires budgets that only the multi-nationals can muster; there are different levels of sponsorship so that the host country's major companies can benefit from worldwide exposure. At the top of the budgetary tree there are 'worldwide Olympic partners': the truly global megabrands who sponsor the Olympic Games every time it comes round: Atos, Bridgestone, Coca-Cola, Dow, GE, McDonalds, Omega, Panasonic

Summer of sport has begun with European Football, next week it's Wimbledon and the Rio Olympics starts on 5 August. Hundreds of companies have paid to sponsor the events, the teams and the players. But if you haven't paid to be an official sponsor, beware of trying to associate your brand with sporting events. Firstly, the sporting event brands themselves police sponsorship very closely; the chicken shop in Stratford that rebranded itself Olympic Chicken in 2012 was short-lived. Secondly, avoid tortuous connections in your email marketing. The eshot that begun 'With Valentines Day fast

When should you choose to select your list by both employee size and annual turnover? Generally our advice is not to do this. Pick just one. Choose employee size if you are selling something relevant for companies whose business relies on having a lot of staff eg, payroll software, health and safety services, absentee management software, internal communications consulting, catering kit for staff restaurants. Choose turnover for everything else. If you really must. Let's say you are buying a list of HR managers, it is largely irrelevant to specify that each company must have 15+ employees

On 26 March 2016 the Information Commissioner issued new guidance on Data Protection and Privacy & Electronic Communications Regulations for direct marketing. The full guidance can be read here https://ico.org.uk/media/for-organisations/documents/1555/direct-marketing-guidance.pdf but we've extracted the sections for business-to-business marketing and they are shown below: Business-to-business texts and emails 1. Rules on consent, the soft opt-in and the right to opt out do not apply to electronic marketing messages sent to ‘corporate subscribers’ which means companies and other corporate

We've compiled a new mailing list of companies signed up to pay their staff the Living Wage and who support the Living Wage Foundation. Signalling a commitment to employee wellbeing and a progressive HR vision, the companies on this mailing list are more likely to invest in HR, people development, learning and internal communications to cement a reputation as an ethical employer. What does it mean to sign up to the Living Wage? All UK companies are obliged to pay workers aged 25 and above the National Living Wage, an hourly rate of £7.83 (The rate for workers aged 21-24 is £7.38 per hour, and

Top 5 Tips To Get Best Value From Your Marketing Lists It's, ahem, 25 years since I sold the first subscriptions to Marketing Appointments to a handful of advertising and design agencies. You don't need to know everything I've learned about mailing lists, business data and marketing information. But knowing how to get the best value from our marketing lists, that is useful. Here's five points for b2b marketers that can't be said often enough. The best performing list is one that contains companies with a similar profile to your current client list. If you buy a mailing list and it contains the

So you've bought your mailing list, removed the people you already have as clients, checked your creative for typos and spelling errors and sent the email out. Apart from dealing with all your enquiries, setting your appointments and processing your orders, what should you do next? It probably isn't your favourite job but remember to keep a record of your results. How many orders did the mailing generate, how many appointments, enquiries, phone calls? Listen to your prospects when you speak to them. Did they understand the mailing and did they know how to respond? Were they the right people to